Dawn Hancock from Firebelly Design

Last week Dawn Hancock from Firebelly Design visited Miami as our final design thesis critic of the semester. Hancock shared her own exemplary work in the area of  Design for Social Change through a public lecture and then spent two days critiquing senior projects. Thanks for all the great feedback, Dawn!  (photo: Hancock with some of the design seniors)

More About Dawn.
As managing director and founder of Firebelly Design, Dawn Hancock cultivates the studio’s culture and inspires the best work with vision, compassion and an infallible gut instinct. It’s that gut feeling—the fire in the belly—that motivates Hancock to challenge the status quo. And it’s ultimately what caused her to renounce the safety net of corporate America and start her studio in 1999 and create “Good Design For Good Reason.” From fledgling nonprofits and hungry start-ups to major corporations looking for complete brand overhauls, clients of every size and industry trust Hancock’s independence, ingenuity and proven approach to authentic, broad scope branding. The studio has won awards in nearly every American design journal and was made part of the Newberry Library’s permanent collection and the Society of Typographic Arts’ Chicago Design Archive. Hancock serves as the community outreach chair for AIGA Chicago and also spends time on the lecture circuit, speaking at design schools and conferences as far away as Doha, Qatar. In addition to inspiring others with her unconventional approach, her other endeavors include the annual Grant for Good, the Firebelly Foundation, Reason to Give, the 10-day intensive Camp Firebelly, and Firebelly U, an entrepreneurial incubator program teaching people with a social awareness and a focus on design to make a more just society. One of our Miami student alums, Liz Chmela, was a fellow at Firebelly U.